Accredited Conferences

NHS England - Ambulance services begin new response times

NHS England states:

Explaining the next steps in the delivery of the Ambulance Response Programme, Professor Jonathan Wenger, NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Urgent Care, and NHS England’s lead paramedic, Richard Webber, told delegates at this year’s Health and Care Innovation Expo being staged at Manchester Central that a further four ambulance trusts would be switching to the new target times before the winter begins.

“Giving call handlers more time for triage doesn’t impede the response to the sickest patients and the ambulance service becomes more efficient as a result,” explained Professor Benger.

“We already have the North West, Yorkshire, West Midlands and South West services working to the new response targets and more will be moving to the new standards in October.

“Rather than sending multiple vehicles to one call and having to stand crews down, we are now sending one vehicle and giving the patient the right response. This is freeing up paramedics and ambulances to attend other calls.

“There is now a response standard for every patient and this will focus services on the less urgent calls while not affecting responses to the most serious calls. From now on the bar will set at 90 per cent of calls to be reached in the target times rather than 75 per cent under the old system.”

Richard Webber added: “We think we will see further improvement in performance as things bed down.”